The Adorable Cheat (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #24 extract: The Adorable Cheat (1928)

This is a fine silent picture, one that aptly describes its characters and self as adorable. A predictable and classical romance depicting a relationship between a lower class man and an upper class woman, The Adorable Cheat utilises some of the main tropes of the 20s romantic film in an industrialised age of unseen heights, and was made by a low-budget, B-picture independent studio (of which there were many that, in the mid-30s, would be aggregated into Republic Pictures), Chesterfield Pictures, most likely, to mimic the escapist fantasies the big studios would produce that would follow pictures like this as the main feature of a programme. 

As a film about a romantic lie that eventually gives way to a more heroic or virtuous truth, The Adorable Cheat is concerned with depicting a 'true gentlemen' and the kind of woman that could both make and recognise one. Creating such a narrative, this conjures some really nice moments of chemistry and a story that I cannot fault. Maybe not a masterpiece, but, to my eyes, faultless, The Adorable Cheat is a brilliant silent gem well worth the watch.